MAR 2022MAXIMU MPC 13
Jeremy Laird
TRADE CHAT
Don’t blame Nvidia
NVIDIA’S NOT-SO-NEW GeForce RTX 3080 12GB graphics card has arrived
with pretty much zero rejoicing. The poor old thousand-dollar GPU has
taken a beating from professional commentators and PC-using proles
alike. And I get it. Another megabucks card destined to line the pockets of
scalpers and miners? Gimme a break. What I’m not so sure about is the
kicking Nvidia has also been taking for daring to launch the 3080 12GB.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m no fan of Nvidia’s
corporate culture, in general. It has long been
the prickliest, most thin-skinned of the major
tech players, getting into more pointless spats
and having a greater propensity to do things like
blacklisting members of the media for perceived
transgressions than its rivals, Intel and AMD.
I understand the particular derision reserved
for the RTX 3080 12GB. For starters, it’s a reminder
that the 3080 should have had 12GB from the get-go.
At the same time, it’s another expensive new GPU
that barely moves the needle for performance, just
like the RTX 3070 Ti, RTX 3080 Ti, and RTX 3090 Ti.
Put another way, the 3080 12GB changes nothing
apart from Nvidia’s margins. It’s another GPU that
shifts the average price of the GA102 GPU found
in the 3080 and 3090 chipsets slightly upmarket.
The 3080 12GB isn’t about gamers, it’s about Nvidia
making more money. That makes people angry
but, actually, I can’t see the problem.
Nvidia is a publicly listed company with
demanding shareholders. The current GPU
market is insane, largely due to no fault of Nvidia’s.
It didn’t invent crypto, nor did it create a pandemic
or disrupt global supply chains. Ultimately, Nvidia
has an obligation to its shareholders. If there
is cash to be made, Nvidia should make it. And
there is serious cash to be made from GPUs at the
moment. There is one counter-
argument involving Nvidia’s long-
term interests and those of its
shareholders. Is there a chance
that not being seen to care about
gamers will alienate what you
could call its true customer base?
After all, the crypto madness
and the pandemic will pass. At
which point, Nvidia will have to
fall back on its core customer
base. For a product such as the
RTX 3080, that means gamers.
Personally, I don’t think it’s a
genuine worry. Let’s say two years
from now, crypto has crashed,
the chip shortage is history, and
Nvidia’s Lovelace refresh GPUs,
which is roughly where we’ll be
by then, are comfortably the best
cards on the market. Are gamers
going to overlook them? Nope.
If it’s a close call between
Nvidia and AMD graphics, maybe
with Intel in the mix too, you could
imagine a few people with hurt
feelings not going with Nvidia. But
I can’t see it being a major factor
to the extent that shareholders will
feel it the same way they feel the
profits from selling megabucks
GPUs for a couple of years
over the pandemic.
Moaning about
Nvidia’s rhetoric on
the 3080 12GB being
all about gamers is
futile, too. What is
Nvidia supposed to say?I remember when AMD launched
the Radeon HD 4870 and told the
world how it would forever be
committed to giving gamers 80
percent of the performance of
Nvidia’s big boy GPU for half the
money. Then it unceremoniously
dropped that idea as soon as it had
a winner in the HD 7970.
Anyway, the point remains that
it’s pointless to jump on Nvidia
for doing what it was set up to
do, namely make money selling
graphics chips. The majority
of factors that are distorting
the current GPU market are
completely beyond Nvidia’s
control. The implied idea that
Nvidia should sell off GA102 GPUs
for far less than what the market
will pay for them is ultimately silly.
It was never going to happen.
All of which means we’re
just going to have to be patient.
Normality will return. Vaguely
affordable graphics cards with
decent performance will be a thing
again. Heck, if Intel’s Arc GPUs
turn out well—admittedly, that’s a
huge, 12-story, neon-lit ‘if’—then
we might even enter a golden age
of three-way competition between
Intel, Nvidia, and AMD in PC
graphics. Here’s hoping.Boo! Hiss! Nvidia’s villainous new RTX 3080 12GB...
Six raw 4K panels for
breakfast, laced with extract
of x86... Jeremy Laird eats and
breathes PC technology.